The neural nature of the core SELF: implications for understanding schizophrenia

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543708.011

10 - The neural nature of the core SELF: implications for understanding schizophrenia

from Part II - Cognitive and neurosciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009

Jaak Panksepp

Edited by

Tilo Kircher and

Anthony David

Show author details

Jaak Panksepp: Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA
Tilo Kircher: Affiliation:
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
Anthony David: Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, London

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Abstract

Schizophrenia is largely an organic disease that impacts many brain systems, especially those mediating cognition–emotion interactions. The present analysis is premised on the existence of a variety of basic emotional operating systems of the brain – birthrights that allow all newborn mammals to begin navigating the complexities of the world and to learn about the values and reward-related contingencies of the environment. Some of the basic emotional systems have now been provisionally characterized, and they help coordinate behavioural, physiological and psychological aspects of emotionality, including the valenced affective feeling states that provide internally experienced values for the guidance of behaviour. Converging lines of evidence suggest that emotional feelings emerge from the interaction of these systems with longitudinally organized brain process for self-representation that is concentrated in the medial strata of the brain. These include anterior cingulate, insular and frontal cortices, which are richly connected to various medial diencephalic and mesencephalic structures, especially the periaqueductal grey (PAG). This basic neural substrate for self-representation appears to be grounded in stable motor coordinates that generate emotion-specific intentions in action, yielding a variety of feeling states that help construct mood-congruent cognitive structures. These systems generate a sense of causality from correlated environmental events and hence promote the emergence of both adaptive and delusional cognitive states. Certain symptoms of schizophrenia may reflect the uncoupling of the higher cognitive and the lower affective processes, disrupting normal modes of emotion regulation and reality testing.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Self in Neuroscience and Psychiatry , pp. 197 - 214

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543708.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Andreasen, N., Nasrallah, H., Dunn, V. et al. (1986). Structural abnormalities in the frontal system in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 43, 136–44Google Scholar

Bailey, P. & Davis, E. W. (1942). Effects of lesions of the periaqueductal gray matter in the cat. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, 351, 305–6Google Scholar

Bailey, P. & Davis, E. W. (1943). Effects of lesions of the periaqueductal gray matter on the Macaca mulatta. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 3, 69–72Google Scholar

Bekoff, M. (ed.) (2000). The Smile of a Dolphin. New York: Discovery Books

Benes, F. M. (2000). Emerging principles of altered neuronal circuitry in schizophrenia. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 252–69Google Scholar

Benes, F. M., McSparren, J., Bird, E. D., SanGiovanni, J. P. & Vincent, S. L. (1991). Deficits in small interneurons in prefrontal and cingulate cortices of schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 996–1001Google Scholar

Bogerts, B., Meertz, E. & Schonfeldt-Bausch, R. (1985). Basal ganglia and limbic system pathology in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 42, 784–91Google Scholar

Borod, J. C. (2000). The Neuropsychology of Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press

Butler, A. B. & Hodos, W. (1996). Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy: Evolution and Adaptation New York: Wiley-Liss

Cartwright, J. (2000). Evolution and Human Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Chugani, H. T. (1996). Neuroimaging of developmental nonlinearity and developmental pathologies. In Developmental Neuroimaging: Mapping the Development of Brain and Behavior, ed. R. W. Thatcher, G. Reid Lyon, J. Rumsey & N. Krasnegor, pp. 187–95. San Diego: Academic Press

Crick, F. & Koch, C. (2000). The unconscious homunculus. Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 2, 3–10Google Scholar

Crow, T. J. (2000). Schizophrenia as the price that Homo sapiens pays for language: a resolution of the central paradox in the origin of the species. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 118–29Google Scholar

Damasio, A. R. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace

Damasio, A. R., Grabowski, T. J., Bechara, A. et al. (2000). Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 1049–56Google Scholar

Douglass, A. B. (1996). Sleep abnormalities in major psychiatric illnesses: polysomnographic and clinical features. In Advances in Biological Psychiatry, vol. 2, ed. J. Panksepp, pp. 153–77. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press

Freeman, W. J. (1999). How the Brain Makes up Its Mind. London: Blackwell

Gallagher, S. & Shear, J. (eds) (1999). Models of the Self, Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic

Godfrey-Smith, P. (1996). Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press

Gordon, N., Panksepp, J., Secor, A. et al. (1998). Peripherally administered kainic acid induced brain damage effects on social and non-social behaviors. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 24, 691Google Scholar

Grace, A. A. (2000). Gating of information flow within the limbic system and the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 330–41Google Scholar

Hauser, M. D. (2000). Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think. New York: Henry Holt

Holstege, G., Bandler, R. & Saper, C. B. (eds) (1996) The Emotional Motor System. Progress in Brain Research, vol. 107. Amsterdam: Elsevier

Ikemoto, S. & Panksepp, J. (1999). The role of nucleus accumbens dopamine in motivated behavior: a unifying interpretation with special reference to reward-seeking. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 6–41Google Scholar

Lane, R. D., Reiman, E. M., Bradley, M. M. et al. (1997). Neuroanatomical correlates of pleasant and unpleasant emotion. Neuropsychologia, 15, 1437–44Google Scholar

Libet, B. (1999). Do we have free will? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 47–57Google Scholar

Lipska, B. K. & Weinberger, D. R. (2000). To model a psychiatric disorder in animals: schizophrenia as a reality test. Neuropsychopharmacology, 23, 223–39Google Scholar

Maquet, P., Peters, J.-M., Aerts, J. et al. (1996). Functional neuroanatomy of human rapid-eye-movement sleep and dreaming. Nature, 383, 163–6Google Scholar

Mesulam, M.-M. (ed.) (2000). Principles of Behavior and Cognitive Neurology, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press

Newman, J. (1997). Putting the puzzle together: towards a general theory of the neural correlates of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4, 47–66, 101–21Google Scholar

Nyberg, L., Habib, R., McIntosh, A. R. & Tulving, E. (2000). Reactivation of encoding-related brain activity during memory retrieval. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97, 1120–24Google Scholar

Olney, J. W. & Farber, N. B. (1995). NMDA antagonists as neurotherapeutic drugs, psychotogens, neurotoxins, and research tools for studying schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacology, 13, 335–45Google Scholar

Panksepp, J. (1982). Toward a general psychobiological theory of emotions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 407–67Google Scholar

Panksepp, J. (1998a). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press

Panksepp, J. (1998b). The periconscious substrates of consciousness: affective states and the evolutionary origins of the self. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 5, 566–82Google Scholar

Panksepp, J. (2000a). Emotions as natural kinds within the mammalian brain. In: The Handbook of Emotions, 2nd edn, ed. M. Lewis and J. Haviland, pp. 137–56. New York: Guilford

Panksepp, J. (2000b). The neurodynamics of emotions: an evolutionary-neurodevelopmental view. In Emotion, Self-Organization, and Development, ed. M. D. Lewis & I. Granic, pp. 236–64. New York: Cambridge University Press

Panksepp, J. (2000c). Affective consciousness and the instinctual motor system: The neural sources of sadness and joy. In The Caldron of Consciousness: Motivation, Affect and Self-Organization. Advances in Consciousness Research, ed. R. Ellis & N. Newton, pp. 27–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Panksepp, J. (2000d). The neuro-evolutionary cusp between emotions and cognitions: implications for understand consciousness and the emergence of a unified mind science. Consciousness and Emotion, 1, 17–56Google Scholar

Panksepp, J. (2000e). Emotional circuits of the mammalian brain: implications for biological psychiatry. In Biological Psychiatry, ed. E. E. Bittar, pp. 27–58. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press

Panksepp, J. (2000f). The cradle of consciousness: a periconscious emotional homunclus? Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 2, 24–32Google Scholar

Panksepp, J. & Panksepp, J. B. (2000). The seven sins of evolutionary psychology. Evolution and Cognition, 6, 108–31Google Scholar

Parvizi, J., Hoesen, G. W. & Damasio, A. (2000). Selective pathological changes of the periaqueductal gray in Alzheimer's disease. Annals of Neurology, 48, 344–53Google Scholar

Rolls, E. T. (1999). The Brain and Emotion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Rossi, A., Stratta, P., Mancini, F. et al. (1994). Magnetic resonance imaging findings of amygdala-anterior hippocampus shrinkage in male patients with schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research, 52, 43–53Google Scholar

Schiff, N. & Plum, F. (1999). The neurology of impaired consciousness: global disorders and implied models. Target article for Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness Electronic Seminar. http://athena.english.vt.edu/cgi.bin/netforum/nic/a/1

Schiff, N. D. & Plum, F. (2000). The role of arousal and ‘gating’ systems in the neurology of impaired consciousness. Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology, 17, 438–452Google Scholar

Sedvall, G. & Terenius, L. (eds) (2000). Schizophrenia: pathophysiological mechanisms. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 106–404Google Scholar

Sewards, T. V. & Sewards, M. A. (2000). Visual awareness due to neuronal activities in subcortical structures: a proposal. Consciousness and Cognition, 9, 86–116Google Scholar

Stevens, A. & Price, J. (1996). Evolutionary Psychology: A New Beginning. London: Routledge

Strehler, B. L. (1991). Where is the self? A neuroanatomical theory of consciousness. Synapse, 7, 44–91Google Scholar

Swerdlow, N. R. (1996). Cortico-striate substrates of cognitive, motor, and sensory gating: speculation and implications for psychological function and dysfunction. In Advances in Biological Psychiatry, vol. 2, ed. J. Panksepp, pp. 179–207. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press

Thune, J. J. & Pakkenberg, B. (2000). Stereological studies of the schizophrenic brain. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 200–4Google Scholar

Toga, A. W. & Mazziotta, J. C. (eds.) (2000) Brain Mapping: The Systems. San Diego, CA: Academic Press

Tononi, G. & Edelman, G. M. (1998). Consciousness and complexity. Science, 282, 1846–51Google Scholar

Tononi, G. & Edelman, G. M. (2000). Schizophrenia and the mechanisms of conscious integration. Brain Research Reviews, 31, 391–400Google Scholar

Watt, D. G. (2000). The centrencephalon and thalamocortical integration: neglected contributions of periaqueductal gray. Consciousness and Emotion, 1: 91–114Google Scholar

Wheeler, M. E., Petersen, S. E. & Buckner, R. L. (2000). Memory's echo: vivid remembering reactivates sensory-specific cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97, 11125-9Google Scholar